Apothecary and Auror
by Pasi
Summary: Severus Snape begins by taking a post as Potioner on a secret Ministry project, and ends by taking his first steps on the path to Voldemort. Complete in seven chapters.
1. Apothecary and Auror: The Silver Fox

**Chapter One:  The Silver Fox**

            Tendrils of mist curled around the man in the Watershed-charmed cloak.  He had his hood tied tight, but icy snow, driven on the northeast wind, beat on every exposed part of his face.   He picked his way down the path treacherous with scree, to the rime-encrusted shingle beach.  The ruined jetty toward which he headed pointed like the gnarled finger of a giant into the choppy slate sea, its tip veiled in fog.

            The man--Severus Snape, Master Potioner and second shift Apothecary at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries--stopped before the signs in front of the jetty.

            _Danger--Keep Off,_ and _Strong Undertow:  Swim at Your Own Risk._

            Not that many swimmers would dare these frigid waters, even at the height of summer.   The cold, the warning signs, the desolation, even the name of the place,  "Deuill's Cove", were enough to keep the Muggles away.

            Most of the time.  Thus Snape had taken the advice of Tewkes, at Magical Law Enforcement, to come at the crack of dawn to meet the Azkaban launch.

            The tide was retreating, so he didn't have to get his feet wet when he approached the jetty and pressed his hand palm-down against the rocks that straddled the high-tide line.

            With a roll of his stomach and the sense that a curtain before his eyes was ripped aside, Snape saw the scene before him change, from deserted winter beach to the docks of the Subministry of Corrections.  He scanned the slips for the Azkaban launch.  Ah, there it was--_MM Waterfetters_ was painted in black letters on the side of the boat, and a scarlet-sashed Auror, standing in the gunwale, was waving Snape over.

            Snape climbed aboard.  The Weatherman, fiddling with his silvery gauges and the Creature-catcher, clad in his oilskins--requisite crew members for a voyage to Azkaban Island--returned Snape's nods.  The sandy-haired Auror stepped forward to greet him.

            "Master Snape?"

            To his surprise, Snape saw the Auror wore, not a Corrections badge, but a badge indicating that he worked for the Subministry of Criminal Investigations.

            "Yes," Snape said.

            The Auror stuck out his hand.  "McMahan.  Andrew McMahan."

            Snape clasped McMahan's hand briefly.  It was strong and warm.  "How do you do."

            The Weatherman tapped his gauges, then lifted his wand above his head.  The driving wind fell to a brisk breeze.  "Conditions aright!" he called, and he and the Creature-catcher pushed off.

            Snape and McMahan said little while the Creature-catcher, harpoon balanced in his right hand, wand in his left, manuevered them out of the cove and into the open sea.

            Presently a charcoal-colored cloud, like the greasy smoke of a burning oil slick swirled before them.  Snape closed his eyes and held his breath against the acrid fumes, just as Tewkes had warned him to do.  In a moment, they were through.

            The cloud dissipated to wisps of smoky mist.  The sound of waves slapping against the launch's hull suddenly ceased:  the sea had turned into a glass mirror that reflected nothing but the monochromatic gray of the sky.

            The Creature-catcher put a spell on the rudder and the Weatherman spoke a Speedwell charm.  The launch plowed forward, north-northeast, slicing a wake in the calm sea.  The Creature-catcher, gripping his harpoon, moved into the _Waterfetters' _prow.

            And none too soon.  A great sea beast with a shiny black snout, two silver orbs for eyes and twin rows of stiletto-sharp teeth breached the water's surface and leapt for the launch.  The Creature-catcher gave a shout and a greeny-black spell, the color of  the murky bottom of the sea, shot forth from his harpoon and struck the monster between the eyes.  With a bellow, it fell back.  The water churned over it, then was still.

            "Don't worry," grunted the Creature-catcher, perhaps mistaking the meaning of the shocked look on Snape's face.  "Just stunned him."

            "Ah--good work," McMahan said.   

            "Shan't be needing them before long, though, eh, Officer?" the Creature-catcher said to McMahan.  "We'll be pulling up the cloud-curtain and letting the little beasties swim where they please.  Shan't be needing anything of the sort round about Azkaban, what with the new guards--"

            McMahan shot the Creature-catcher a sharp look.  At once the man fell silent.

            What was that all about?  But Snape didn't tax McMahan with it.  Instead, standing amidships with the Auror a few minutes later, he said:

            "You're not with Corrections, Officer McMahan."

            A look of loathing twisted McMahan's features for a second.  "No!" he said.

            A bit of interdepartmental warfare there?  Snape tried another tack.

            "I'm here on the Warden's new project, myself.  His infirmarian needs help in preparing a Defenses-Downdraught for a round of interrogations."  Snape paused.  "Though I thought you people did the interrogations.  At the Subministry, in London."

            "You'll have to speak to the Warden about that."  The soft burr was gone from McMahan's voice.  He practically hissed through his clenched teeth.  "I'm quite--peripheral--to his current project."

            "Right."  Snape backed off and made no further attempts at conversation.  In about ten more minutes, the Viking-age fortress of Azkaban loomed out of the smoking mists.  In mingled awe and revulsion, Snape stared at the lichen-pocked stone walls and narrow, dark windows of the wizarding world's prison.

            The Weatherman and the Creature-catcher tied the _Waterfetters_ up at dock while McMahan and Snape debarked.

            McMahan was calm again, though, as he glanced up at the prison, the expression in his eyes remained cold.  "I'm sorry I can't accompany you to the Warden's office, Master Snape.  I'm on-shift now and have to relieve one of my colleagues.  The Warden's expecting you, though.  Just give your name to the guard at the gate, and he'll tell you where to go."

            "Thank you, Officer."

            McMahan nodded curtly and strode off.  Snape, wondering whether it would be one of the new guards who would instruct him, headed in the direction McMahan had pointed out, to a stone staircase that climbed up the steep hillside to the front gate of Azkaban.

#

            Whether old or new, the guard at Azkaban Gate had seemed ordinary enough.

            "Past the double doors of the receiving area.  Up three flights of stairs, first right, second left, third door on your left.  Watch your step and have a nice day, sir."

            Snape was now in the midst of following his directions.  Halfway up the second flight of stairs, he paused to pull out his watch.  Fifteen minutes before he was to meet Warden Reid--

            Then the torch on the second-floor landing went out.  A cold exhalation rushed down the stairs upon Snape; at the same time, he felt something like a clenched fist striking his stomach, sending his breakfast to the back of his throat.  He gulped hard, then, shuddering, he sagged against the wall of the stairwell.  Weakness washed over him.  The watch slipped from his grasp.  It bounced down a couple of steps.  Then, falling face down on the third step, with a soft tinkling, its glass front shattered.

            But Snape didn't heed it.  His father had emerged from the darkness of the second-floor landing and was descending toward him.

            "Damn you, you pup!  Stand aside!  The snivelling cow will sign the voucher or I'll kill the both of you!"

            Behind Snape, a woman was sobbing.  His mother.  He spread his arms to shield her.

            "Not Mother," Snape whispered.  "Please--I'll do anything--"

            "Stand aside.  Stand aside, boy!"

            Next, Father would knock Severus aside with a fist to the jaw.  Then, he would beat Mother until, screaming and weeping, she submitted.  It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, the very worst--

            _How could it be happening again?_

The cold, the sickness, the memory, the certainty that it would never end, that he could never, ever be happy....  It couldn't be.

            But even as he thought it, Snape was groping inside his cloak for his wand.  He drew it out of the sheath at his belt, and, closing his eyes for a moment, cleared his mind.

            He put a new memory there.  The night he had finally persuaded his mother to leave, the night they'd slipped out of the filthy house, bags in hand, while his father snored in a drunken stupor on the sitting-room couch.  Severus hadn't known where they were going, hadn't cared.  It had been joy enough to feel the cool, clean night air on his face, to breathe it into his lungs.  To know that Mother was safe, and he was free.

            Snape opened his eyes.  The Dementor was sweeping its hood from its head, to reveal the black void of its maw.

            Snape extended his wand.  _"Expecto Patronum!"_  White light shot from the wand's ebony tip.  The light formed itself into an arctic fox crouched to spring.  Like a  streak of silver, the fox flew at the Dementor.  The Dementor flowed backward in a swirl of robes.  The last Snape saw of it was a flutter of hem, disappearing into the darkness above.

            Snape scrambled to his feet, his stomach still tilting inside him.  A Dementor?  Where had the thing come from?  And _how_ had it come, across miles of freezing, wind-whipped ocean?  Worse yet, what havoc would it wreak, feasting on all the passion and misery bubbling through Azkaban like a poison potion on high boil?  Preying on cellblocks full of wandless, defenseless witches and wizards?

            He had to get to the Warden, and not only to receive his assignment.  He bounded up the next two flights of stairs, two steps at a time.  First right, second left, third door on his right.  There it was:  ironbound oak with a small sign on the wall beside it:  _Office of the Warden._  And, next to that, in smaller letters on a plaque:  _Thom Reid_.

            Beside the opposite casing hung a bell rope.  Ignoring it, Snape opened the Warden's office door and strode inside.

            A man with a bald crown wreathed with wispy gray hair sat bent over a parchment behind an age-darkened desk, scratching away with his quill.

            He looked up and fixed Snape with sharply intelligent, gray-green eyes.  "Have you an appointment, sir?" he asked coolly.

            This was the Warden, Snape saw by the badge framed with administrative piping pinned to the man's breast.  "Yes, but that doesn't matter.  This is an emergency.  There's a Dementor loose in your prison, Warden!"

            The Warden looked at Snape.  "Shut the door," he said.

            For a moment, Snape was taken aback.  But of course the Warden didn't want Snape's news spreading and causing a panic.  He shut the door and turned back to the Warden, who was now flipping through a small desk calendar.

            "Master Snape, isn't it?"  The Warden gestured to the chair in front of his desk.  "Have a seat."

            Snape stared at his calm face in astonishment.  "Didn't you hear me?  I said, there's a Dementor loose inside the walls of Azkaban!  It nearly Kissed me!"

            "I know," the Warden answered.  "My people are seeing to it.  Now, won't you please sit down?"


	2. Apothecary and Auror: The Warden of Azk...

**Chapter Two:  The Warden of Azkaban**

            Snape felt the heat rise in his face.  Why should he have expected that his emotional outburst was news to the man who had been Warden of Azkaban for the last twenty years?  Of course he knew about the Dementor, and his guards were probably already expelling it from the island.

            Snape sat down, straightening his back against the cushion of the armchair across from the Warden's desk.

            "The name's Reid," the Warden said, sticking his hand across the desk.  "Thom Reid, Warden of Azkaban.  As I guess you know, since you came here to report your emergency."

            Snape's face grew hotter.  "Ah, yes, sir."  He harnessed his thoughts, calming them.  Then he took Reid's hand.  It felt as cool and dry as an abandoned wasp's nest.  "I'm Severus Snape.  You asked my supervisor at St. Mungo's to send you an Apothecary for potions work on a project you have in hand.  She chose me."

            "Your letters?" Reid said.  "Mr. Tewkes told me you had one from Subminister Crouch as well as Apothecary Morgan. "

            Snape shrugged out of his cloak, took the letters of introduction from his robe pocket and handed them to Reid.

            Reid didn't open the letters.  He glanced at the addresses, then turned each letter seal-side up and tapped it with the tip of his wand.

            "I assure you, sir, the seals are genuine." Snape tried to say it as mildly as he could.  "Though you need not rely on my word.  You can analyze the signatures, too."

            Reid smiled faintly.  "Oh, I will, now that I've determined the letters are safe to open.  No offense meant, don't you know."  He opened the letters, perched a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and began to read.  "We live in interesting times, that's all."

            After he was done reading, Reid smoothed both letters flat on his blotter and passed his wand over them once.

            "Ah," Reid murmured, smiling down at the letters as at old friends.  "Very good."  He looked up.  "Well, Master Snape.  You come to me with excellent recommendations.  Melusine Morgan cannot speak too highly of you, it seems.  And she has Barty Crouch's ear.  Fortunately for both of us, for Melusine has never led me wrong yet."

            Feeling a bit less disgruntled, Snape nodded.

            "Which means I won't have to erase the memory of your meeting with that Dementor in the stairwell." 

            Snape frowned in confusion.  The Warden was smiling, as if he thought he'd just made a good joke.

            "It's not your fault a Dementor got inside Azkaban," Snape said.  "They're very determined creatures, and perhaps the lure of the prisoners' emotions extends itself even to their lairs on the mainland."  He paused.  "I won't tell anyone, if you'd rather I didn't.  You've no need to tamper with my mind."

            "Nor do I want to, Master Snape.  We understand each other, then?"

            "I hope so," Snape said, though he wasn't sure _he _understood.  "Madame Morgan and Mr. Crouch both said your need for a potioner was urgent."

            Reid folded his arms, leaned back in his chair and looked speculatively at Snape over the top of his glasses.  "You're fresh," he said.  "You weren't a prisoner it had fed on a score of times already.  I suppose that's it."

            A chill ran down Snape's back.  "I beg your pardon?"

            "The Dementor.  I must apologize for that, Master Snape.  It didn't cross Azkaban Sound to attack you.  They don't, generally.  They hate water.  This one sniffed you from the second-floor cellblock and left its post for the stairwell.  Where it found you."

            "Its post?" Snape said blankly.

            Reid sighed.  "We're trying to train them as guards.  Another one of Barty's initiatives.  Not that they're ineffective.  Quite the opposite.  But it's hard to find people who can--well--_focus_ long enough to make them understand exactly what it is we want.  To keep them from haring off after distractions such as yourself.  You understand."

            "No, I don't understand," Snape said.  "What are you trying to tell me?"

            "That the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has summoned Dementors to guard the Death Eaters we're holding here at Azkaban.."

            __

_            "What?"_

"That's where you come in.  Not to train them, of course," Reid said, as if that were the reason for Snape's horror.  "They've sent us Aurors for that, skilled Patronus-conjurors.  But I've found I need a Potioner, too."

            "Why?"

            "Well, Master Snape, it's because there are two kinds of Death Eaters:  the kind the Dementors affect too much and the kind they don't affect enough.  Applies to all of wizardkind, I suppose, but that's neither here nor there. "  He picked up one of the reference letters from his desk.  "Melusine Morgan says you formulate the most potent Defenses-Downdraught she's ever assayed.  That could help with the tough nuts, since we can't use Veritaserum.  I couldn't tell you how many times Barty's gone to the Wizengamot to get an order for its use.  Dumbledore's clique always blocks his request.  Not your problem, Master Snape.  I know.  No need to look at me like that."

            "I thought my Draught was to be used to relax the prisoner's guard so that he would be an easier subject for interrogation by the Aurors.  I did not and do not intend to lay anybody open for predation by a Dementor."

             "Well, that's the prisoner's choice, isn't it?  Once he's answered our questions, he won't have to drink any more of the Draught.  Will he?"

            Snape stared at him, unable to reply.

            "Of course not," Reid said, in an irritatingly jocular, jollying-along tone.  "Those, as I say, are the tough nuts, the ones who are affected too little.  Then you have your Death Eaters who are affected too much.  They're the sort who'd be all too eager to answer questions, if they only had the presence of mind to do so.  I need something to give them that'll calm them, help them collect their wits.  Haven't anything of that sort up your sleeve, have you, Master Snape?"

            "Are you mad?" Snape asked.

            "No."  Reid's tone was suddenly as quiet and even as Snape's.  "_They_ are.  And I need them sane, so they can sit down in front of the Wizengamot long enough to testify coherently.  To name names.  So the Aurors can catch the rest of their murdering lot and put them right here--" he slapped his hand lightly on the top of his desk "--for the rest of their lives."

            "Really?  I had no idea."  Nor did Snape have any idea how he managed to keep his voice calm as he said it.  What did this fellow think he was?  And how could Apothecary Morgan have sent Snape here?  What did _she_ think he was?  "If that's what you want, I'm afraid I can't help you."   He started to get up.

            _"_Can't you?  You'll be sorry, then."

            Did Snape sense an attempt at bewitchment, nestled somewhere in that voice?  Or was it Reid's taunting tone that set anger on the boil deep in his gut?

            Very slowly, Snape sat back down.  "Shall I?" he said softly.  "That sounds rather like a threat, Warden.  Why don't you just show me _how _you can make me sorry?"

            "I was afraid you'd be like this," Reid said.  He pulled open a desk drawer and peered inside.  "Ah, here it is."  He took a parchment from the drawer, unrolled it and began reading aloud.

            "'Hogwarts, fifth year, detention and thirty points from your House for casting a Slicing Hex on one Sirius Black, a fellow student.  Sixth-year, detention and fifty points off for casting the Mindmasher Curse on James Potter, another student.  Hmm, in June.  Wanted him to fail his final exams, I guess.  Seventh year, you tried to slip a spoonful of Bloodfreezing Potion in Potter's suppertime pumpkin juice--.  Strong stuff, that.  You knew how to brew it while you were still in school?  And this Potter--you don't seem to have got on well with him."

            Reid had an odd look on his face as he said the last.  He read on.

            "Then, your first year at St. Mungo's.  You were an intern.  Apothecary Morgan happened to walk in on you grinding a powder of Hidden Hellebore."

            Snape's breath caught in his throat.

            Reid was watching him.  "The preparation of the powder was complete.  You'd just finished casting the spells of olfactory and gustatory concealment.  You'd just earned yourself three years in Azkaban.  Or a ten-thousand-galleon fine, since it would have been your first offense.  But you didn't have ten thousand galleons, did you, Master Snape?"

            His father's last beating had put his mother in the hospital.  For of course she'd gone back to him.  The moment of freedom that had created Snape's Patronus had been little more than that, a moment.  She'd left his father and returned to him several times since then.

            Snape had determined to make this the last time.  If Mother wanted to return to the bastard--if she was so broken in spirit, so inexplicably mad--let her return to his grave.

            Snape knew where the old man lived on his pension, in a run-down apartment he'd taken in London.   Where Mother had followed him, like some whipped but ever-loyal pet.  Snape had gone there often enough, to see to it his father didn't kill his mother.  He could go there one more time, while Mother was out shopping, perhaps, drop a few grains of his specially-tweaked Hidden Hellebore into his father's ale....

            He wouldn't have had to stay behind to watch.  He'd read Dark Magic since before his admission to Hogwarts.  Hidden Hellebore seized its victim with convulsions minutes after ingestion.  Snape's formulation would make the convulsions end with a fatal stroke.

            Had he really been about to get up, leave his lab, go to his father's apartment and go through with it?  Or had he already begun to doubt himself before Madame Morgan stepped into his lab?  She'd looked at the gray powder in Snape's mortar and then into Snape's eyes.

            She must have seen everything there, for she'd said quietly:  "You want to throw that powder down the sink, don't you, Severus?"

            He'd obeyed her at once, in silence.

            "She had to note it in your record, though, Master Snape," Reid said, as if he'd read Snape's mind.  "Madame Morgan's responsible for training Apothecaries, people who will be licensed to dispense medicinal potions to the public.  We can't have our Apothecaries poisoners, can we? "

            Madame Morgan had never mentioned the incident to Snape again.  He hadn't known she'd recorded what she'd seen.  Or had she?  But if she hadn't, how had Reid found out about it?

            "You'd removed the hellebore from the controlled substances cabinet," Reid said.  "You'd processed it.  You were caught with the processed powder in your possession.  All without a Healer's order.  You weren't filling a _prescription_, Master Snape.  You're very lucky Madame Morgan didn't turn you in.  I guess she thought it was enough that you disposed of the stuff in her presence.  Maybe she felt sorry for you.

            "But I'm an officer of the law.  Strictly speaking, I _ought_ to report  you."

            Three years in Azkaban.  His Master Potioner's and Apothecary's licenses revoked.  He'd lose the house and the last of the family's ancestral estate.  Father had mortgaged it to pay his gambling debts.  Snape had let the house.  Even so, he was barely keeping up with the loan payments.  His mother would have nowhere to live, nothing to support her in her old age.  And Snape would end his life in the same gutter his father was headed for....

            "But, as I said before, Master Snape, we live in interesting times.  Fact is, we're at war.  In wartime, you sometimes have to bend the rules.  I'm willing to bend the rules.  That's how badly I need a Potioner of your caliber."

            "At war?" Snape said weakly.  "With whom?"

            "With the Death Eaters, of course.   And with this fellow who styles himself their leader.  This Voldemort."

            The Death Eaters again.  Before the Ministry had summoned him, Snape had thought they were a political party with conservative leanings and a few lunatic fringe elements.  All the best pureblood families sympathized with them.  The Blacks, the Malfoys...

            "Overenthusiastic," Lucius had said of the hooligans to Snape once.  "But their hearts are in the right place."

            Reid was unrolling another parchment.  "If Madame Morgan can forget your youthful indiscretion and recommend you for licensure, for employment at St. Mungo's--well, who am I to object?"  Reid pushed the parchment across his desk.  "If you could see your way to contracting to work with us.  Just sign at the bottom."

            Snape glanced at the contract, saw that "breaking the contract provisions" or "divulging the particulars of said project to anyone not cleared by the Subminister of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement" would render him liable to prosecution and wondered why he bothered to read any of it.  He couldn't afford to refuse Warden Reid. 

            "All right," Snape said wearily.  He took the quill Reid offered him and signed the contract.

            Reid smiled.  "Thank you so much, Master Snape," he said, rolling up the parchment and slipping it into the drawer.  Taking a key from the ring at his belt, he locked the drawer.  "Why don't I call the on-shift Auror to escort you to your lab?  That way, there'll be no repeat of that unfortunate incident in the stairwell."

            Snape didn't answer.  He rose from his seat and stood by the door with his back turned to Reid, to wait for the Auror to fetch him.


	3. Apothecary and Auror: Reflections

**Chapter Three:  Reflections**

            It was McMahan who met Snape at Reid's door.  The Auror's face was pale, with a thin sheen of sweat on the brow.   His normally friendly blue eyes were expressionless.  Snape murmured a greeting.  McMahan's only reply was a stiff nod.

            He did seem to relax a bit, however, by the time they reached the lab--at least to the point of adding to his facial expression a cynical twist of the mouth when he and Snape stepped inside.

            "Here it is," he said with a wave of his hand.

            Like the Warden's office, the lab was lit even during the day with torches to ward off the smoky darkness that crept in through every narrow window, every crack and crevice of the ancient fortress.  Every now and then the torches flickered and dimmed, as if they flagged in their constant fight against the gloom.

            Even by that uncertain light, Snape was pleased enough by what he saw:  well-scrubbed, granite-topped work tables, shelves of _materia medica_ neatly preserved in glass jars, another shelf of locked drawers meticulously labeled with the names of herbs and prepared powders, a back wall lined with clean cauldrons and retorts in excellent condition, a cabinet filled with dragonskin gloves and aprons in various sizes.  Beside the closet of protective gear, a door opened into a tiny, tidy, candle-lit office.

            "Hope you're happy with it," McMahan said, the cynical smile still curving his lips.  "We've had bags and boxes of new supplies shipped in to this lab, ever since Barty Crouch started taking an interest in Azkaban.  You should have everything you need for your work on the Ministry's new project."

            "Very good," Snape said, looking at him curiously. 

            McMahan gave another one of his flippant waves, this time toward a closed door in the back wall, next to the shelves of cauldrons and retorts.  "The infirmary's that way.  But I wouldn't go in there, if I were you, without the infirmarian's invitation."  McMahan's cool, indifferent look focused into a hard stare.  "And, if I were you, I wouldn't go in without an Auror to accompany me."

            "That may make my work difficult," Snape said.  "At St. Mungo's, I spent half my time on the wards."

            McMahan laughed shortly.  "This isn't St. Mungo's.  Haven't you worked that out yet?"

            Snape felt his jaw tighten.  McMahan was beginning to irritate him.  "Then perhaps you and I could both go to the infirmarian and ask him or her to give me a tour of the ward."

            "Him, Master Snape.  But not today.  I'm off-shift."  McMahan's expression softened.  "Look, it's late.  Why don't you just let me show  you to your rooms?  You can settle yourself in, then have supper.  Either in the staff refectory or in your own room."

            "Fine," Snape said, stifling an impatient shrug.

            They walked through dusky, torchlit corridors and up a flight of stairs to the east wing of the fortress.  McMahan stopped in front of a polished oak door and handed Snape a ring of keys.

            "Keys to your room here, your lab, your office and to the desks, drawers and cabinets in all three.  Never leave a room to which you have the keys without locking everything inside it and the door which leads into it.  Do you understand?"

            "Certainly."

            "Good.  I'd make it an early night, if I were you, sir.  Healer Shaftsbury will expect to see you in the infirmary at seven o'clock sharp."

            With an Auror, Snape supposed.  "Where shall I meet you, then?" he asked McMahan.  "In the lab?"

            A smile of relief, like a ray of the rising sun, broke across McMahan's face.  "Oh, you won't be meeting _me,_ thank the Light.  I'm off Azkaban rotation for the next two months at least.  The new man starts tomorrow.  That's the poor devil who'll take you into the infirmary.  I'll leave a note for him before I step on to the launch this evening."

#

            Snape chose to have his supper sent to his rooms.  He sat sunk in an armchair, staring into the fire, long after he'd washed down his mutton chop and potatoes with a pint of ale.

            His chair wasn't six feet from the hearth.  He was no longer hungry.  He was wrapped to his chin in woollen robes.  And still he was cold.  There was something dark and damp in this place, that crept into the marrow of your bones, no matter what you did to fend it off.

            How did the prisoners, with no fires, no soft chairs and much poorer food than Snape had just enjoyed--how on _earth_ did they stand it?

            And then, for the Death Eaters, to add Dementors to that harsh mix....  Dementors were Dark creatures, for Merlin's sake.  Wasn't the Ministry of Magic supposed to be fighting _against_ the Dark?

            Snape had thought Lucius Malfoy a bit overwrought at times, when he'd warmed to the subject of the Death Eaters.  They spoke often now, ever since the summer before, when Lucius had renewed what Snape had always thought had been a lukewarm schoolboy acquaintance--understandably weak, because of the five years' difference in their ages--and had seemed to be trying to strengthen it into friendship.

            Snape had responded.  It had seemed as natural to accept Malfoy's patronage then as it had been to accept the protection of the Prefect, Head Boy and Slytherin Quidditch Captain during his first and second years at Hogwarts.  He'd attended Lucius's wedding to Narcissa Black and gone down several times since then to Wiltshire, to spend the weekend at the family's estate.

            "For hunting, parties and politics," Lucius had said with a smile, when he'd extended his first invitation to Snape.  "Not necessarily in that order."

            Snape had been on the dueling team at Hogwarts and had his Potioner's hunting license, so he was a decent shot with wand.  But he was no match for Lucius.  To hunt with his host embarrassed him more than anything else.  And, since he loathed making small talk and couldn't dance, he hated the parties even more than the hunting.

            That left the politics.

            Ever since leaving school, he had avoided political discussion.  His surname was Snape, not Malfoy or Black.  Strongly-held and strongly-expressed political opinions were a luxury he couldn't afford.  He had his way to make in the world.  Along the way, he'd learned to keep his political views, with most of his other opinions, under mental lock and key.

            Not that he hadn't always shared Lucius's views.  As a Slytherin schoolboy in good standing, Snape had hated the Muggle-borns just as much as the rest of them did.  With the contamination of their blood and the degradation of their culture, the Mudbloods would succeed at what hundreds of years of Inquisitorial persecution had failed to accomplish:  the destruction of the wizarding world.  He still despised them, but, with age and conscious suppression--as a Ministry employee at St. Mungo's, he rubbed elbows with Muggle-borns every day--the feeling had grown less intense.  In the first place, nothing consumed him as much as did his fascination with the arcane art of Potioning and his desire to get ahead in his chosen career.  Not least, because success would bring him the respect he had always longed for.

            In the second place, Lily Evans, his own personal Muggle-born tormentor, was now Healer Potter of the emergency department at St. Mungo's.  Though she was  now married to James Potter of the Mudblood-loving Potter clan, the one man Snape hated most in all the world, she was forced to treat Apothecary Snape as politely as Apothecary Snape was forced to treat her.

            Life wasn't school.  Nor yet was it one's childhood home.  Snape had left both behind, by immersing himself in his work, in the steady rise of his prestige at St. Mungo's, in the financial independence contained in that bag of galleons the hospital bursar handed him every week.  He'd proven it by being able to work alongside Healer Potter in the toughest conditions, in spite of her careless beauty, in spite of her, a Mudblood, putting on the airs of a pureblood witch.  In spite of James Potter occasionally stopping in at the emergency room at the end of the shift, to put a proprietary hand on Lily's arm and lead her off, without so much as a glance in Snape's direction.

            Such were the ways of the world.  And, in his new friendship with Lucius Malfoy, Snape had begun to feel that he had a much more philosophical attitude toward the world than Malfoy did.

            "They're much more _our_ sort, you see," Lucius said of the Death Eaters.  "That's what rankles Alastor Moody and his cohorts in Law Enforcement.  Dumbledore's coterie, you know.  Fudge and Crouch only _think_ they command Moody and his Special Unit.  Moody's allegiance is to Dumbledore.  Look how Moody keeps feeding Crouch's paranoia about the Death Eaters.  That's just what Dumbledore wants."  Lucius laughed softly.  "If only Crouch knew!"

            "Knew what?" Snape asked politely, though his mind was already wandering.

            "Ah, nothing."  Lucius's tone was light, but his eyes glittered with a strange, zealous delight.  "Only let Barty Crouch keep it up.  He'll find out soon enough!  Now I hear he's ordered Moody  to break up any Death Eater meeting at which Lord Voldemort gives a speech."

            Lord Voldemort,  the head of the Death Eater party.  It had to be an assumed name, sounded like something the leader of a street gang would call himself.

            "It's because Lord Voldemort says aloud what the rest of us think in our hearts.  That we should stop pouring half the Ministry's budget into maintaining a bureaucracy that does nothing but feed the Muggles' self-deception.  That we should declare ourselves.  That we should assert our right to exist in the world we both share.  Enough of these Muggle Protection Acts, that people like Dumbledore and Harold Potter keep introducing into the Wizengamot.  Let the Muggles learn to protect themselves, as their ancestors did."

            Snape smiled cynically.  "You mean, through another Inquisition?"

            "Oh, no," Lucius said.  "The Lord would never let the poor Muggles do _that_ to themselves again.  After all, most of the victims of the Inquisition were Muggles.  No, I'm talking about before the Inquisition.  The Muggles had rulers who knew how to get along with us then.  The pharaohs and their magicians.  The Celtic chieftains and their Druid priests.  The American Indians and their medicine men."

            "Oh, that," Snape said.  "Yes, in those days the Muggles got along with us.  Because they feared us."

            "Exactly, Severus."  Lucius's smile broadened, showing a row of even, white teeth.  _"Exactly."_

#

            Did the rest of the Death Eaters think as Lucius did? Snape wondered, staring into the dancing flames.  And had the Ministry caught on?  Was that the reason for the crackdown on the Death Eaters, the summoning of the Dementors and the hiring (and blackmailing) of a Potioner who could weaken the Death Eaters into betraying their comrades to the Wizengamot?

            Snape rose, yawned and stretched.  He went in to the bedroom, hung his robes up to air and  pulled on his nightshirt.  He was exhausted.  Nevertheless, the questions bouncing around in his head and the lingering horror of the Dementor clutching at his heart aroused a fear in him that he'd get no rest that night.

            But he was wrong.  Perhaps the Dementor had taken more out of him than  Snape realized, for he sank into sleep like a stone into water as soon as his head hit the pillow.


	4. Apothecary and Auror: The New Man

**Chapter Four:  The New Man**

            The next morning, after a quick cup of tea in his rooms, Snape made his own way to his lab.  The Auror wasn't there yet, so Snape, shivering in the ever-present Azkaban cold, lit the fire and candles, did _not_ forget to lock the door behind him and began exploring.

            Before long he had a cauldron and burner set up.  He started to poke around in the drawers and cabinets for the components of a SoftSoother potion, with the idea that anybody who had faced a Dementor for any longer time than he had in the second-floor stairwell the day before would need a goodly amount of soothing before he could regain coherence.  He had selected a phial of tincture of opium from the controlled substances drawer and was scooping valerian root from a green-tinted jar when he heard the rattling of a key in the lab door's lock.

            Snape had whirled around and nearly drawn his wand before it occurred to him that Dementors would most likely not be allowed to carry keys.

            The door opened.  A man wearing the bright red sash of an Auror walked in.

            A man of Snape's age.  Of exactly Snape's age of twenty-three years.  Tall, with dark hair, sticking out and standing on end, as though he'd been riding in a high wind, with horn-rimmed glasses magnifying hazel eyes, which, fixed on Snape, were already huge with astonishment.

            _Potter, James,_ was the name on the Criminal Investigations badge the Auror had pinned to his sash.

            Snape felt his stomach tighten and his muscles tense, as if the years had fallen away, as if Potter, with Black at his side and his adoring audience gathered round, had waylaid his favorite victim yet again.

            _"Snape,"_ Potter said, just as he'd used to say it before he and Black had pulled their wands.

            Hatred rose like bile to the back of Snape's throat.  He swallowed it back.  This wasn't school.  Here, Potter was alone.  Just like Snape.

            _"Master_ Snape," Snape said.

            Potter stared at him for a moment.

            "Right.  And I'm _Officer_ Potter.  I'm to partner you this rotation.  We conduct our first interrogation this morning, in the infirmary."

            It hit Snape then.  "You're McMahan's replacement.  The new man."

            "Spot on," Potter said.

            Snape turned to the sound of another key rattling, this time in the door that connected to the infirmary.  The door opened to reveal a middle-aged wizard with a barrel chest and silver-streaked black hair.

            "Ah.  You're both here, then," the wizard said.  "I'm Shaftsbury.  You're Potter and Snape, I take it?"

            Potter ran a hand through his hair.  He seemed to be trying to look over Shaftbury's shoulder into the infirmary.  "Yes, sir.  I'm Potter," he said.

            "And I'm Snape," Snape said.

            Shaftsbury beckoned.  "Come in and I'll show you around before they bring the subject down.  And don't forget to lock the lab door."

            Snape locked the door and followed Potter in.  The infirmary was like the wards he'd been on at St. Mungo's, except that it was darker, far less cluttered and had no patients.  Drawing near to one of the beds, Snape saw manacles, one attached to each side of the bed, and a pair of fetters at the foot.

            Potter stared at them, too.  His face, Snape noticed, was quite gray.

            Shaftbury showed them a laundry, storage areas and his tiny office, which looked exactly like Snape's.  He showed both of them how to raise and lower the bed and how to lock and unlock the chains.

            "You'll let Officer Potter take care of the subjects, though, Master Snape.  Your business is to brew and feed them potions.  I'm only showing you the beds in case he needs your help."

            "Yes, sir," Snape said.  Beside him, he heard Potter give a soft, trembling sigh.

            Shaftsbury's last stop was the fireplace at the far end of the infirmary, in which a pallid fire burned.  "I'd wear your warmest robes to work, if I were you," he said, eyeing the flickering flame.  "This is the strongest fire I've ever been able to build in here.  As for calls, use this fireplace only in emergencies.  It connects straight to the Warden's office."  He turned back to them.  "Any questions?"

            Snape and Potter shook their heads.

            "Good.  Wait here for the guards to bring you the day's subject.  There'll be a half-goblin patrolling the corridors, Potter.  Have him call the Warden if you need anything."

            Snape heard Potter's hard swallow.  Perhaps he recalled, as Snape did at that moment, that half-goblins were useless for controlling Dementors. 

            "Yes, sir," Potter said.

            "You're not staying?" Snape asked Shaftsbury.

            "Why, no.  My job's to make sure the subjects are healthy enough _before_ the Aurors question them and, if need be, to fix them up _after_.   I don't need to stay _during, _don't you know."

            Before Snape could think of an answer to that, Healer Shaftsbury had escaped.

#

            They were alone.  Snape looked at Potter.  "Now what?"

            "Don't you _know?"_

            "No.  Why should I?"

            Potter looked at him incredulously, then reached into a pocket and pulled out his watch.  "You've probably got half an hour.  I'd mix up a Defenses-Downdraught, if I were you, and put it on to simmer.  Then come back here."

            Resentment stirred inside Snape.  Potter hadn't lost his penchant for ordering his minions about.  And everyone in Potter's sight was Potter's minion.  "You've done this before, I suppose?" Snape said.

            "No, but I've heard about it from McMahan and the others."  Potter eyed him.  "Don't know if you've read the staff handbook yet, Snape.  But it says in there that everybody in Azkaban is subject to Law Enforcement."

            _"That means you, Snivellus."  _Potter didn't have to say that part aloud.  Snape could hear it in his tone easily enough, just as easily as he could read the heading on Potter's badge:  _Department of Magical Law Enforcement_.  While his own badge read:  _St._ _Mungo's Hospital._

            Snape pressed his lips together until they hurt.  He turned his back on Potter so sharply he could hear the hem of his robe cutting through the air.  He went back into his lab and did not forget to lock the door behind him.

#

            Snape kept the opium but traded the valerian for the powders of various species of attenuated hallucinogenic mushroom--ingredients that weakened psychic boundaries without inducing visions.  He added a base and some inert ingredients to stabilize the potion, lit the burner and set an hourglass with a wave of his wand to time the simmering for fifteen minutes.

            He sat down to wait, and the torches faded.  The fire in the hearth died to an ember and even the strong blue flame under his cauldron flickered.

            _I'm trapped, _he thought.  He lifted a trembling hand to touch the palpable darkness.  It was no more than a foot from his eyes when the darkness swallowed it up.

              _I'm trapped in Azkaban and they'll never let me out._

In the back of Snape's mind, at the edge of his hearing, his father shouted and his mother wept.

            Snape stood, clutching the back of his chair for balance, and groped for his wand.  Holding the tip inches from his nose, he whispered, _"Lumos."_

The light at the end of his wand flickered weakly.  But it was pure white and it was enough for him to see a couple of feet in front of him, enough to light his way to the infirmary door.

            He fumbled for his keys with a shaking hand, unlocked the door and flung it open.  Leaning against the casing for support, Snape lifted his wand like a lantern.

            Its light fell on a stunning tableau.  Snape saw Potter, standing stiff and straight on one side of an infirmary bed.  His face was set and he held his wand in his hand, at the end of his outstretched arm.  A silvery fluorescence, like lazy white fire, writhed at its tip.

            On the other side of the bed stood two hooded Dementors.  Between them stood a wizard in prison robes.  His head was bowed and a tangled mass of strawberry-blond hair hung in front of his face, so that Snape couldn't see it.

            Snape's eyes jumped back to Potter.  There was suppressed terror in his eyes as they flicked back and forth between the Dementors and their prisoner, terror in every line of his tensed body.  Yet his voice was steady when he spoke.

            "If you'll lie down quietly, Ruskin, you won't draw their attention.  They won't touch you."

            The wizard threw back his head, tossing the curtain of hair from his face.

"I'll touch _you_, Potter, once he frees us," he hissed.  "You're top of my list.  Just you wait."

            _Olaus Ruskin_, Snape thought, stunned.

            "Nobody's coming to free you, Ruskin," Potter said.  He glanced at the Dementors, then at his wand tip.  The fire there brightened and stretched a few inches further over the bed.  "Now why don't you just lie down?"

            "What is going on here?" Snape said.  His voice shook.  With a whisper of their robes, the Dementors shifted toward him.

            "Easy, Snape."  Potter didn't take his eyes off the Dementors.  "I don't need you exciting them, too."

            Of course.  Snape silenced the clamor of his feelings.  He drew out his wand and stepped forward to stand beside Potter.  He stared at the Dementors and summoned the memory of  his first taste of freedom from his father.

            Snape didn't speak the Patronus Charm.  He focused in silence on his happy memory until a silvery-white Patronus Precursor, just like Potter's, furled out from the end of his wand.  The two Precursors together were enough in drive the Dementors back to a shadowy spot several paces behind Ruskin.

            Ruskin glanced over his shoulder at the Dementors, then stared in wonder at Snape.

            "Snape," he said.  "If it isn't Severus Snape."

            Snape looked back.  It _was_ Olaus Ruskin.  Slytherin prefect, Quidditch team captain, handsome and popular, only a few points behind Potter in the school standings and in his O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts.  How often had he been able to call a gang of Slytherin boys to his side within  minutes, to rescue Snape from Potter and Black, to run the Gryffindor gang off in humiliated defeat?

            Not every time, but often enough.  The Marauders hadn't won every round, thanks to Ruskin and his friends.  No, indeed.

            "Ruskin needs the Downdraught, Master Snape."  Potter still didn't look at him, but held the other three, Ruskin and the Dementors, in the purview of his eyes and his wand.  "Would you get it for me, please?"

            Snape glanced at Ruskin, who grinned insolently at him.

            "Why?" Snape asked Potter quietly.

            Potter's lips tightened.  He relaxed them at once.  "Because he needs it.  Officer McMahan reported to me that he refused to answer any questions."

            Ruskin laughed.  "Because he  _wants_ it," he said, gesturing at Potter and parodying Potter's tone.  "Because he's got his lapdog Snivellus to fetch it for him!  I see I wasted my time with _you, _Snape.  You love it when Potter treats you like shit.   All those times at school, when he hung you up in the air and stripped off your panties, you were loving it!  You might have told me, you know.  I wouldn't have interfered with your fun."

            Through all of Ruskin's taunting, the Dementors never made a move.  It couldn't have been because Potter had them so well-controlled.  They'd turned on Snape as soon as they'd sniffed Snape's revulsion, and Potter had had his wand on them then.

            No.  The Dementors didn't react because Ruskin had his true feelings completely under his command.  The mocking contempt was an emotional Invisibility Cloak.  He'd learned how to fend off the Dementors.  Without the Defenses-Downdraught, Potter wouldn't get a single straight answer out of Olaus Ruskin.

            "Master Snape?" Potter said.  "The Defenses-Downdraught, please?"

            "Fetch, Snivelly, there's a good dog!" Ruskin said.

            Snape turned his back on both of them, walked into his lab and shut the door on the sound of Ruskin's derisive laughter.

#

            Snape stood with his fists clenched, breathing deeply, staring at the covered cauldron of Defenses-Downdraught for a couple of minutes before his emotions were under sufficient control to allow him to relax.

            So.  He was to cooperate with his tormentor to torment the one who had rescued him from torment.

            And if that weren't twisted enough, what about this:  Olaus Ruskin, glittering overachiever at Hogwarts under the headmastership of that hero of the Light, Albus Dumbledore, had chosen to become a Death Eater.  If Ruskin could see his way clear to that, Snape thought, the Death Eaters couldn't be as black as the Ministry and the Prophet painted them.

            Potter's voice, calm, though slightly strained, called to him from the other side of the door:  "Master Snape?"

            "Coming, Officer."  Snape uncovered the cauldron.  An aroma like dirt-covered roots plunged in boiling water rose to his nostrils.  He poured two ladlefuls of Defenses-Downdraught into a pewter cup, covered the cauldron and carried the cup into the infirmary.

#

            "I'll spell you to drink it, if you won't drink it voluntarily," Potter said to Ruskin.

            "I'll sue you from here to the hollow hills if you try it.  I know my rights," Ruskin answered.

            They were both so calm, so steady.  The Dementors remained quiet.  And Snape patterned his demeanor after Potter's and Ruskin's, in order to keep the Dementors quiet.

            Potter went on conversationally.  "It's not the Imperius Curse, you know.  Doesn't mess with your mind.  It's something Chief Moody developed, to operate the muscles of your mouth and gullet."  Potter fished a parchment out of his pocket.  "Here's a warrant.  The Wizengamot would never let us use the Imperius Curse.  And Veritaserum gets past them only once in a blue moon.  But they're fine with the Defenses-Downdraught or Carmenoris."

            Ruskin snatched the parchment from Potter's hand, unrolled it and read.  When he lifted his eyes, they were blazing with anger.  The Dementors rustled softly in their corner.  Snape whipped out his wand, and the Dementors quieted again when they sensed the wispy Patronus Precursor wavering at its tip.

            "Why don't you just drink it, Olaus?" Snape asked.

            Ruskin turned a disconcertingly direct gaze on Snape.  "Because that would be a kind of treachery, wouldn't it?  And I would rather die than betray my friends, my cause or my Lord.  There are things worth dying for when you must, Severus.  When people like Potter will no longer allow you to live for them.  Maybe someday you'll see that."

            Snape looked away.  His glance stopped on Potter.

            Potter's face was so white he looked as though he might faint.  His jaw twitched.  After a few moments, he managed to still it.  Then he pointed his wand at Ruskin and said:

            _"Carmenoris."_

#

            After ninety minutes and three doses of the Defenses-Downdraught, Ruskin still hadn't talked. 

            But his defenses were certainly down.  The Dementors had drifted from their corner and were hovering close enough for Snape to hear their rustlings and smell their rotten exhalations. 

            It was Snape's job, when he wasn't dosing Ruskin, to hold them off while Potter questioned the prisoner.  He sweated with the effort of keeping his Patronus Precursor alight at the end of his outstretched wand, of maintaining a perimeter around Ruskin and Potter.

            After Ruskin had swallowed his third dose, Potter took the Carmenoris off him.  The infirmary bed was in a half-upright position.  Ruskin lay chained to the bed, shuddering.  In the flickering, unstable torchlight, his face shone with sweat.

            The Dementors stretched themselves as far as they could over Snape's perimeter, reaching for Ruskin with their scab-encrusted hands.  Ruskin turned his face away.

            "Get them away from me," he moaned.  "Please."

            "They're your guard," Potter said.  "You know I can't send them off."

            For a moment, Snape heard nothing but Ruskin's ragged breathing.  Then Potter said:

            "Just tell me where the next Death Eater meeting will be, and who will attend.  That's all I want to know."

            Ruskin's breathing rasped on for about thirty seconds.

            Potter went on in a queer, flat monotone.  "We know your lot have done murders on mixed-blood families.  Rosemary Greaves's husband and her three-year-old daughter.  That was your last hit."

            "Blood traitor," Ruskin whispered harshly.  "She deserved it."

            "Is that what you plan at your meetings?  Whose innocent relations, whose children you'll kill next?  Does Voldemort attend, to give you your orders?"

            "How dare you speak the Lord's name!  One day he will burn your soul out of you, Potter, I swear it!"

            The Dementors stretched further and gave soft sighs of longing and anticipation, the only sound Snape had ever heard them make.

            "No," Snape told them, but his voice quavered a bit.  Potter snapped around and drew his wand.

            "No," Snape and Potter said in unison.

            Behind them, Ruskin laughed maniacally.  "If the Dementors don't drink your soul first, Potter!  If they don't drink both your souls first!"

            Ruskin's laughter held some sort of mad courage, for the Dementors, drifting back into their corner, seemed to have forgotten him.

            "He needs more potion," Potter said.  "Snape, go get--"

            "No!" Snape said.  Ruskin laughed on.

            "What do you mean, no?  His defenses are back up--"

            Snape rounded on him.  "You fool!  I've already overdosed him:  he's had six drams in less than two hours.  I could crush his psychic defenses for days if I give him another dose.  He'll go mad!"

            Potter stared at Snape, his eyes sunken and dark in his sickeningly pale face.  He was the one who looked mad.

            "Mad?" Ruskin shrilled.  "You're worried about me going mad, Severus?  But isn't that what Barty Crouch wants?"

            "Oh," Potter said softly to Snape.  "Right.  Well, then.  I guess we're done for the day."  He pointed his wand to the Dementors.  "You two, return to your posts."  They drifted out the door, and the half-goblin guard came in.  "Magwitch," Potter said to the half-goblin.  "Call Healer Shaftsbury to attend to the prisoner."

            Snape escaped into the lab then and locked the door behind him.  As he was cleaning up, he considered throwing the remains of the Defenses-Downdraught down the sink.  But it was good for another week, and the ingredients were expensive.  Instead, he stoppered it in an airtight jar and put it on the shelf he'd reserved for his finished potions.


	5. Apothecary and Auror: Confrontation in ...

**Chapter Five:  Confrontation in the Corridor**

Snape ate lunch in his rooms--or, rather, he took one bite of the ham sandwich he'd asked to have sent up for him from the kitchen and sent the rest back to be thrown away.  The rotten odor of the Dementors and the rank smell of Ruskin's sweating terror lingered in his nostrils, making him feel too sick to eat.****

            He spent the afternoon in his lab, inventorying his ingredients and making up batches of Defenses-Downdraught.  Then, very carefully, he poked his head into the infirmary.  It was empty.  Ruskin's bed was remade, as spotless and wrinkle-free as if he had never struggled there in anger and fear.

            Snape crossed to the infirmarian's office, where Healer Shaftsbury was writing notes.  He asked the Healer if he needed any medicinal potions made up.

            "Why, thank you, Master Snape," Shaftsbury said with a grateful smile.  "I'll write you up a list."

            He did so, scratching away with his quill for a few minutes.  When Shaftsbury handed him the rolled-up parchment, he looked Snape up and down.

            "Don't start these today, though, Master, that's my prescription.  Make yourself a cup of Bracetea, drink it down and go eat your supper.  And make sure the elves give you a big piece of chocolate cake for dessert."

            Snape had to obey him.  His mind was still dark with the Dementors' horror and his body was faint with hunger.

#

            He went to the refectory to eat.  It was the only way one could choose from the entire menu.  He lined up at a service table with the rest of the professional staff and piled his plate high with roast beef, mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage.  There _was_ chocolate cake for dessert.  The pieces looked as big as cake-quarters.  Snape scooped one up and put it on his tray, along with a glass of milk.

            He saw Warden Reid and Potter eating together when he turned toward the refectory tables.  He tried to sidle off into one of the corners, but Reid saw him and stopped him with a beckoning wave.

            Potter didn't look up.  The only way Snape knew him was by the cowlick sticking straight up from the crown of his head.

            "Come, Master Snape!" Reid called.  "Come sit with us!"

            A few of the other staff lifted their heads to look at Snape.  Now he couldn't escape.  Smothering a sigh of exasperation, he went to sit down at Reid's table, opposite Reid and Potter.

            Reid, looking nearly as twinkly and avuncular as Dumbledore at his best, made small talk for a few minutes, mostly along the lines of making sure that Snape was comfortable in his rooms and well-supplied in his lab.

            Snape politely replied that he was perfectly content.

            "Excellent!" Reid said.  "I can flatter myself, then, that I've had some hand in forwarding Ruskin's interrogation.  Officer Potter here says that your potion has weakened Ruskin's defenses quite nicely"  He turned to smile at Potter's messy dark hair.  "Didn't you, Officer?"

            Potter looked up, blinking, from his untouched plate of food.  "What?"

            "Didn't you say that, thanks to Master Snape, you expect Ruskin to break down at any moment?"  Reid sounded like a kindly master jollying along a rather slow schoolboy.

            Potter looked at Snape.  "Oh.  Yes.  If anybody can do it, Master Snape can."

            Why was Snape reminded of all the times Potter had accused him of using Dark Magic, as if the magic Potter had used to torment him had been any less effective?

            "Officer Potter is too modest," Snape said, looking right into Potter's eyes.  They looked haunted, as well they might.  "He's done his share of the work.  He hasn't shirked his duty as a--" Snape paused a second "--_Ministry_ Auror."

            _"They shoot to kill the giants, you know,"_ Lucius had said during one of those manor house weekends.  _"And they fought as hard as we did against the new werewolf regulations.  Probably had some sadists in Corrections who enjoyed putting the beasts to death.  Dumbledore's got his nerve, talking about the conservative prejudice against halfbloods.  What about the Ministry's prejudice?"_

"Of course, of course!"  Reid exclaimed.  "I wasn't meaning to take away from Officer Potter's credit at all.  You're right, he _is_ too modest."

            Neither Potter nor Snape said anything to that.  Snape was sick of the conversation.  Perhaps Potter was, too.  He made a show of pushing his food around on his plate, but actually ate very little. 

            Snape, however, was ravenous.  He polished off his meat and vegetables, ate every last crumb of the chocolate cake and washed it down with his milk.  Reid had sense enough and Potter had self-absorption enough to leave him in peace through the rest of his meal.

            Snape bade them both a curt good evening when he was done.  He rose from the table and left his tray on the top of the stack by the service counter.

            He had nearly escaped--was striding through the hallway to the stairs that led up to his lab--when he felt a hand touch his arm.

            Snape started and spun on his heel.  It was Potter.  Lifting his hands, he backed off a step.  "Easy, Snape."

            Lording it over Snape, as he'd done in the infirmary with Ruskin.  "Don't patronize me!" Snape snapped.  "You've no victim to impress here!"

            Potter blinked.  "What are you talking about?"

            Snape wouldn't flatter him with an answer.  "What do you want?" he demanded.

            "A word with you, that's all," Potter said.  "Will you calm down?"

            Snape glared at him in silence.

            "I just want to know why you're here," Potter said.  "Did you know this was my rotation?"

            "How on earth would I know that and why on earth would I care?"

            "It's just that Reid claims he's been begging the Ministry for a potioner for weeks.  You're the first he's managed to get."

            "I volunteered.  It looked like something that would be good for my career."

            Potter stared in astonishment, then snorted a bitter laugh.  "Good for your career?  How did they sell you that one?"

            "Why are _you_ here, then?"

            "It was my turn.  I could skive off, I suppose.  Dad doesn't like it; he'd pull strings..."

            It was undoubtedly true.  Harold Potter, James's father, the head of his rich, respectable pureblood family and Second to Chief Warlock Dumbledore on the Wizengamot, could probably get anything he wanted.

            "But I couldn't do that to my mates," James Potter said quickly.  "Make somebody else pull a double Azkaban rotation because my dad's been able to talk Crouch into letting me off."

            Potter paused, looking as sober as Snape had ever seen him.  "Besides, we've got to stop the Death Eaters.  Maybe the Dementors are too...I don't know.  I don't know!  But we've got to stop Voldemort's crew. Anybody who stands up to them--" Potter snapped his fingers in the air, then waved his hand "--they're gone.  Murdered.  Tortured into madness or death--"

            "The acts of hooligans," Snape said.  "The fringe elements.  The entire Party isn't like that."

            Potter's eyes narrowed.  "How would you know?"

            How did Potter _think_ he knew?    Snape bent close to Potter.  "Are you bringing your Muggle witch hunt to me, then?" he hissed.  "Am I next on the Ministry's enemies list?  Will you throw me into a cell next to Ruskin's?  Send your Dementors to break me down, too?"

            "Easy, Snape--"

            _"Don't_ say that to me again.  Respectable people, respectable families sympathize with the Death Eaters.  _They_ at least don't employ Dementors.  What makes you think your lot's so much better than the Dark Lord's?"

            "All right, I'm sorry."  Potter retreated a step.  "Don't quite know what I did, but I'm sorry. "  He sighed.  "Look.  I don't like this any better than you do.  Nobody in Law Enforcement does, except maybe Reid.  But he's Corrections.  Every last witch and wizard in Criminal Investigations fought tooth and nail against the employment of Dementors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.  Everybody, from Alastor Moody on down.  But what can we do?  Crouch wants it and Fudge backs him."  Potter shook his head.  "Fudge is scared to death because we can't get a handle on the Death Eaters.  He won't even listen to Dad or Dumbledore."

            Dad and Dumbledore, spoken in the same breath, of course.  Snape sneered contemptuously.  "Why don't you resign in protest?  You could announce it publicly.  You, your 'Dad' and Chief Warlock Dumbledore could issue a joint press release:  'We abjure the deplorable decision by the Ministry of Magic, unworthy of civilized wizarding Britain and inspired by an unseemly and unnecessary fear of certain criminal elements, to set soul-draining monsters over not only the convicted but also the merely accused inmates of Azkaban.'  Et cetera.  I'm sure the three of you, great minds that you are, could compose something even more eloquent."

            "No.  I can't quit.  Or at least I--I don't want to yet," Potter said.  His look was intent and, somewhat to Snape's surprise, entirely devoid of anger or offense.  "I want to solve this within the law, work inside the system.  I want to be part of 'civilized wizarding Britain', joined together to fight the outlaws, the criminals, the Dark.  I don't want to part of one gang, led by one charismatic wizard, making hits on another gang, led by another charismatic wizard, may the bloke with the biggest wand win.  I don't want to live like that.  I don't want my child born into a world like that."

            "Your child?" Snape said.

            Potter flushed deeply.  "I, ah--Lily is--I'm going to be a father.  Pretty soon now."  He sounded winded.

            Congratulations.  Wasn't that what one was supposed to say?  Snape's throat was too tight, his mind too full of Lily's--Healer Potter's--face.  Brighter-eyed, rosier-cheeked and even more exhausted than usual.  Wasn't that how she'd looked, the last time Snape had worked with her?  Or was his imagination embellishing the memory?

            "Anyway, I can't quit."  Potter's voice broke in on Snape's thoughts.  "Even though, however it may be helping yours, this shit is doing absolutely nothing for _my_ career.  Or my peace of mind.  Or my home life.  Or any fucking thing else of mine.  So let's leave it at that."  Potter turned to go, then stopped and looked over his shoulder.  "See you tomorrow morning in the infirmary, Snape.  Seven o'clock sharp."

            Snape didn't answer.  He watched Potter stride down the corridor and mount the stairs, until Potter's tall frame, his tousled head, the flowing black of his uniform robe and the red-banner brightness of his Auror's sash faded into the ever-close darkness.


	6. Apothecary and Auror: Linked Magic

**Chapter Six:  Linked Magic**

            Snape arrived in his lab at six, just to make sure he was there ahead of Potter.   With Lumos he lit the candles and torches, with Ignis he lit a fire in the hearth.  And he didn't think he'd ever found it harder in his life to produce those two simple charms.  The capacity of the dirty black Azkaban fog to creep into every nook and cranny and the amount of one's magical life-blood it took to sweep that fog back simply astounded him.

            He emptied one of the jars of Defenses-Downdraught he'd put up yesterday into a cauldron and set it over a low flame to warm slowly.   The potion was exactly where he wanted it, just short of the boiling point, when the torch flames began to flicker and the familiar melancholy began to settle over his heart.

            A key rattled in the lock of the connecting door between the lab and the infirmary.  The door opened and Potter stuck his head in.

            "We're ready for you, Master Snape."

            Snape ladled Defenses-Downdraught into a cup.  Without forgetting to lock the door behind him, he entered the infirmary.

            Snape sought out the Dementors first.  Like black light, they shimmered in a corner.  Ruskin, already bound to a bed, was lying back with his eyes closed as if he were asleep.   Potter, eyes fixed on Ruskin, wand held lightly in his right hand, looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

            Ruskin's eyes popped open suddenly, piercing blue in his grimy, sunken-cheeked face.  He couldn't have been sleeping, Snape thought.

            "Snape."  Ruskin's voice sounded like sandpaper scraping across rough wood.  "Back with the blood traitor, I see."  His eyes flicked toward Potter, then back again to Snape.  "Thought yesterday was a bad dream."

            Snape could think of nothing to say.  He supposed he didn't have to answer.

            "Where will the Death Eaters meet next?" Potter asked in the same weary monotone he'd used the day before.  "And who will attend the meeting?"

            Leaning on his hands, Ruskin struggled up as far as his bonds would permit.  Snape could see his arms and shoulders shaking.  He spat expertly, straight toward Potter's face.  Lifting his wand, Potter deflected the wad of spittle just before it struck him.

            Potter reached out a hand.  "The Draught, Master?" he said, his voice unchanged.  Snape handed it to him.  Potter extended the cup to Ruskin.  "Will you please drink the potion voluntarily, Ruskin?"

            Ruskin laughed, so harshly that Snape thought it must have hurt his throat.  "What, and deprive you of your chance to bully me into it, Potter?  When you're such a natural?"  Ruskin fell back against the bed and grinned at Snape, his eyes glittering madly.  "Isn't he, Severus?  Did he play the underwear trick on you again last night?  And what did he make you do to him after?"

            "I'm asking you for the last time, Ruskin:  please drink the potion," Potter said.

            Ruskin jerked around to Potter again.  "Fuck you," he whispered.

            Potter lifted his wand.

            _"Stop!" _Snape cried.

            Potter lowered his wand and looked at Snape.  His eyes were shadowed wth exhaustion.  "What is is, Master?" he asked.

            "Ruskin," Snape said.  "Has someone examined the heart of his magical power recently?"

            Ruskin laughed softly.

            "No." Potter said.  He looked too tired to go on, but he did.  "He won't--"

            "I won't let the bastards near me," Ruskin said.

            "He refuses to allow Healer Shaftsbury to examine his power," Potter said.

            "Then how do you know, Officer, that he is fit to be interrogated?" Snape asked.  "He fought your spells and my potions all day yesterday.  He had Dementors guarding him last night.  He may be nearly drained.  He certainly looks it."

            Potter looked from Snape to Ruskin and back again.  "There's nothing I can do about it if he won't let Shaftsbury examine him."  His voice quavered just slightly.  He was losing his cool veneer.  "We've got to find out what he knows, and soon."

            "Why the hurry?" Snape asked.

            "Because word has it, from Moody's own sources, that Voldemort's planning to go after Aurors next.  And their families.  And the people Dumbledore's gathered round him; he even knows--"  Potter stopped suddenly.  His face went white with fear.

            "Ah, yes, Potter."  Ruskin's raspy voice.  "The Order of the Phoenix.  The Dark Lord knows about the Order of the Phoenix.  And he knows the members of the Order.  _Every one of them."_

Potter's eyes grew wide.  Slowly he turned toward Ruskin.  Their gazes locked for several long moments.

            "He knows them, Potter," Ruskin whispered.  "And he will kill them.  _Every one."_

            Snape heard Potter take several shallow, hitching breaths.  Then he lifted his wand.

            _"Carmen--"_

_            "Averte!"_ Snape said sharply.  The countermanding spell leapt so fiercely from his wand that it threw Potter back a step.

            Potter spun on him in infuriated surprise.  "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

            A rustling like dry leaves sounded in the corner.

            "Didn't you hear me, Potter?" Snape said.  He flung a hand toward Ruskin.  "That man is too weak to be interrogated today.  He _will_ fight our potions and he _will_ fight our spells.  Another day of that, followed by another night with the Dementors will very likely kill him!  And if it doesn't, all he has to do is tell his Advocate you went on _without_ examination, _against_ the potioner's advice, and nothing he says can be used as evidence to gain a warrant or as sworn testimony before the Wizengamot!"

            Potter was trembling.  "Then don't advise me against going on."

            Rustling sounded outside, all around, at the very edge of Snape's hearing.  Imagination?  He couldn't attend to it now.

            "But I do advise you against it, Potter.  And I will note that in my records."

            Potter's chest heaved for a moment.  He turned back to Ruskin.  "Then let him tell me without the potion!" he shouted suddenly, bending over the prisoner.  He seized Ruskin's collar and shook him.  "Tell me where to find your Master and his murderers, tell me, or I'll--!"

            Snape drew his wand.  "Let him go, Potter!" he roared.  "You arrogant, self-centered fool!  This isn't the Quidditch pitch where you can beat up the Slytherin who's grabbed the Snitch out from under your nose!"

            Potter dropped Ruskin.  Ruskin fell back on the bed and gasped out his laughter.  "Oh, no, this isn't Hogwarts!  Far from it!  James Potter's not cock of the walk here and he knows it!  Not like the days when he could whistle for his Marauder curs and set them on some Slytherin he'd caught out by himself!"

            The laughter went out like a Dementor-snuffed candle.  Ruskin, panting, turned to look at Snape.

            "You remember those days, don't you, Severus?  I'd hear yelling, me and the lads would come running, and there you'd be, backed up against a wall, dodging the spells of four on one and giving as good as you got."

            Snape stared at him.  No one had ever put it to him that way before.  Not even Ruskin. 

            Four on one.  Giving as good as he got.  For once, it didn't sound pathetic.  It sounded almost...heroic.

            "I had some respect for you then," Ruskin went on in his soft, raspy voice.  A voice that rustled, almost, like the background noise.  "You were tough.  Why did you give it over?  Why'd you turn your back on your own kind?  Why'd you join _them?"  _He tossed his head toward Potter.  "What do you get from it, except for the chance to lick Potter's heels like the rest of his pack?"

            "I don't have time for this!" Potter snarled.  His eyes were wild, desperate.  He pointed his wand at Ruskin.  "You're going to drink that potion, Ruskin, one way or the other, and you're going to talk to me--!"

            Rage, white-hot as an avenging spell, exploded in Snape.  He raised his wand, aimed its tip at Potter's right hand.

            _"Expelliarmus!"_ he cried.

            _"Protego!"_ Potter yelled at the same time.  With a crack and a blinding flash of light, their spells rebounded off each other and faded like spent fireworks.

            His wand raised and his face livid with fury, Potter walked slowly around Ruskin's bed.  When he was no more than a foot in front of Snape, he stopped. 

            "What was that all about?" Potter asked softly.  He held his wand in dueling position, in front of his chest, its tip pointed at Snape's chin.  "What do you think you're playing at?"

            "I told you," Snape said.  "One more session like yesterday's, and you'll kill him!"

            "What are you, a Healer?  How do you know?"  Potter bent closer, until his nose was inches from Snape's.  "Whose side are you on, anyway?"

            Ruskin whimpered.

            "You bastard," Snape hissed.  "Isn't that just like you!  I'm not on your side, hexing anybody who gets in your way, like Black.  I'm not at your feet, groveling for the crumbs of your attention, like Lupin and Pettigrew.  I have thoughts, desires and opinions that diverge from those of James Potter, Knight of the Light, so I'm just another Dark Wizard, fit for Azkaban!"  He pointed his wand at the cup of Defenses-Downdraught Potter had set on the bedside table next to Ruskin.  _"Evanesco!"_

The potion vanished.  Snape turned toward his lab, saying, "That's what I'm going to do to every drop of Defenses-Downdraught I've brewed for you animals.  Then I'm taking the next launch out of here."

            "Not likely, Snape," Potter said.  "The launch won't take you unless Warden Reid lets you go.  Or maybe you've forgotten what I told you:  like everybody else here, you're under the orders of Law Enforcement.  And Warden Reid is the highest-ranking representative of Law Enforcement on Azkaban Island."

            Snape stared at him.  Potter stared back until comprehension dawned in his eyes.

            "Yeah, you _did_ lie, didn't you?" Potter said.  "You volunteered because you thought playing this gig would be good for your career.  Sure.  You didn't volunteer any more than I did.  So let's get it over with.  Get me another Downdraught."

            Trembling with fury, clutching his wand, Snape didn't answer.  He  heard something like the beating of birds' wings and the sound of weeping, soft and seemingly distant.

            "Oh, and by the way," Potter said.  "Mess with my Carmenoris one more time, Snape, and I go straight to Reid."

            This, from the wizard who had stripped so much more than his clothing from Snape, in public, in front of the whole school.  This, from the one who would have given him to a werewolf, if he could only have gotten away with it, who had saved Snape from Lupin only in order to save his own skin.

            This, from the bully who hadn't changed one bit, whose latest victim was Ruskin, the only other other boy at Hogwarts who'd had the strength and popularity to go up against James Potter and his Marauders, and win.  Ruskin, the only other wizard--or witch--at Hogwarts who had ever defended Snape without humiliating him.

            Ruskin, whom Snape heard weeping.         

            Snape snarled deep in his throat.  He raised his wand, and it didn't matter that the hand that held it shook.  Potter was alone with him; it was a fair fight at last.   No Black here to warn Potter as there'd been that day by the lake after O.W.L.s.  Nobody to keep  Snape from tearing Potter's face to ribbons with a Slicing Hex.

            The bottled-up rage of years surged through Snape toward its focusing-point, the tip of his wand.  Which was aimed at James Potter's face.

            Then the door connecting the infirmary with the corridor burst open with a crash.  The infirmary torches went out.  And Ruskin screamed, a long, harsh, shrill sound, that made Snape think someone had to be tearing his heart from his chest.

            That was just before Snape's father returned.  Shouting, cursing, raising his wand:  _"I'll kill the both of you!"_  Meaning it was up to Snape, again, somehow, to save his mother.

            But another voice spoke, too.  What was it saying, in those tones of shock and horror?

            "Paddy, how could you lead him to the Whomping Willow tonight!  It's the full moon!  How could you hand any human being, even _him_, over to a werewolf!  What if Moony bites him?  It's the death penalty!  They'll send Moony to Azkaban and chop his head off; you'll have murdered our best friend!  Merlin, what are we going to do?"

            Potter.

            "Potter."  Snape hardly recognized his own choked, hoarse voice.

            Snape's father bore down on him ("Stand aside, boy!").    Ruskin's scream, taking on words, pierced the darkness again:

            "Dementors!  Get them off me, oh, please--!"

            Ruskin's voice was suddenly cut off. 

            Snape heard rustling snd sighing.  Then, "Dementors," Potter croaked.  He wasn't a yard from Snape, yet Snape could hardly see his outline in the darkness.  "Dozens of Dementors."

            Or scores of them.  So many they'd burst the lock on the infirmary door.  Snape could see them now, hooded forms looming solid black against the darkness they had created.  They had a Leader:  one at their head, which lifted spindly-fingered hands to sweep off its hood.

            "Patronus," Snape gasped.

            "But not--alone."  Potter sounded as breathless as Snape felt.  "We've got to link our powers.  Alone, they'll--"

            Potter faltered, but Snape understood him.  Alone, they were too weak:  the Dementors would take them and Kiss them, first one and then the other.  He and Potter had to link their powers, to more than double their magical strength in a joined Patronus Charm, or they would never be able to drive off so many Dementors, who had fed so well on the misery of Azkaban Prison....

            "Snape," Potter said hoarsely.  "My hand.  Take my hand--"

            "Yes."  Snape groped the air, felt Potter's fingers brush against his, seized Potter's hand.  Potter's returning clasp was bonecrushingly painful, but warm and full of life as nothing else around Snape was.

            "All right, Snape," Potter whispered harshly.  "Your happiest thought.  Even if it's the one where you're killing me."

            It wasn't.  His happiest thought was as it had ever been, the fresh night air on his face as he and his mother made their escape, the memory of those few short weeks of freedom before his mother enslaved herself to his father again.

            And with that memory came another image, brief as a snapshot, of a beautiful young woman whose dark red hair was dressed with violets and lilies-of-the-valley, whose green eyes, on fire with joy, were gazing up into his face.

            Lily Evans Potter, at her wedding.  James Potter's wedding.  James Potter's memory.

            That was why Snape felt that odd rushing in his veins, that was why he knew exactly _when_ Potter would call out the charm--

            _"Expecto Patronum!"_  At precisely the same moment, two wizards' voices rang out.

            A blue-white jet of light shot simultaneously from their raised wands.  So blinding was the flash that it took Snape a few moments to see his arctic fox darting with unerring precision between the legs of a huge, leaping animal, a stag, a magnificent, gleaming-white eight-point buck.  The stag and the fox exchanged glances.  Then, as if that had been a signal, they charged the Dementors together in one perfectly coordinated motion.

            With the Patronuses in pursuit, the Dementors fled through the door, down the corridor and away.  The torches flared back to life, brightening the infirmary to a clarity Snape had never seen yet in Azkaban.

            He sought Potter's eyes, as his fox had sought the stag's.  Those eyes, when Potter turned to him, were round in wonder.

            "That was some Patronus Charm, eh, ma--, I mean, Snape?"  He turned slowly in a circle, lifting his eyes to the flaming torches, taking in their brilliance with a look of longing delight on his face.  He didn't seem to see the mildewy, soot-streaked walls and the shabby, manacle-clad infirmary beds that the torches revealed to Snape.  "We didn't just dispel those Dementors.  We _crushed_ them.  They'll be out of the game for hours, maybe days.  They won't be able to bother the prisoners--"

            Prisoners.  Potter stopped as though he'd remembered at the same moment Snape had done.

            "Ruskin," Snape said.  He ran to his bed, Potter beside him .

            Ruskin was still there.  Snape, who didn't want to look at his face, looked instead at his wrists, cut deep by the manacles against which he'd struggled.  He looked at Ruskin's chest, rising and falling, heard the faint rattle in Ruskin's throat.  He was still breathing.  Still existing.

            He made himself look then into Ruskin's eyes.  They were an emptiness of forget-me-not blue, devoid of the fire of Ruskin's great intelligence and spirit, drained of his life.

            Drained of his soul.  For Snape could see the bruises around Ruskin's mouth, where a Dementor had fixed its great, sucking maw and drunk Ruskin's soul to the dregs.

            "It Kissed him," whispered Potter.

            "That's what they do, Potter," Snape said.  "Didn't you know?"  He gestured toward Ruskin's husk.  "Remember what he said?  That's what the man you work for wants."  Snape jabbed his finger again at Ruskin.  "_This_ is what Barty Crouch wants."

            Potter didn't seem to be listening.  "My God, my God," he whispered.  He knelt beside Ruskin and took Ruskin's hand in both his own. 

            "Potter, let go of him!" Snape warned.  Just looking at Ruskin made Snape's stomach churn with nausea.  "Don't touch him; you're no Healer!  Let me get Shaftsbury--"

            Potter groaned aloud, yet he clutched Ruskin's hand harder than ever.  The vacuum that was Ruskin was surely sucking agonizingly at the warmth of life and magical power that it felt in Potter, but Potter seemed to lack either the strength or the sense to break away.  He groaned again and, bowing his head over the hands he'd clasped around Ruskin's hand, wept in harsh, tearing sobs.  "Oh, God, what are we doing here!" he cried.  "What am I doing?  What have I done?"

            It wasn't fatal to touch one of the Kissed without the protection of a Healer's charms.  Was it?  Snape didn't think so.  But it would take a Healer to release Potter if he didn't have the ability to let Ruskin go of his own accord, and if he weren't released soon, he might sicken for weeks.

            Snape didn't dare leave Potter to search for Shaftsbury.  Where was Magwitch? he wondered.  Had he fled?  Had dozens of Dementors been too much even for a creature as insensitive as a half-goblin?

            Snape didn't have the courage to stick his head into the corridor to look.    There'd be consequences for it, he knew.  Consequences for all of it.  Nevertheless, he went to the infirmary fireplace and called Warden Reid.


	7. Apothecary and Auror: Divergent Paths

**Chapter Seven:  Divergent Paths**

            Warden Reid was not pleased.

            That Snape knew, though the door to Reid's office was closed to him now, while he waited outside for his turn to talk to the Warden, though he'd neither seen nor spoken to Reid in the twenty-four hours since he'd heard his icy voice over the fireplace.

            Twenty-four hours had passed, and the Dementors still were disabled.  There was no way Warden Reid could be happy about that.

            Reid's office door opened and a tight-lipped Potter came out.  He closed the door quietly behind him.  Then, with his fists clenched at his sides, he strode off.  He paid no attention to Snape.

            The door opened again.  Reid's head appeared in the doorway.

            "Snape," he said, gesturing Snape into his office.

            Reid slid behind his desk after closing the office door.  He did not invite Snape to sit in the armchair opposite.

            Even here, Snape noticed, everything seemed brighter.  Milky sunlight filtered through the small, narrow window above Reid's head and slanted down to the flagstones beneath Snape's feet.  It was the first he'd seen of the sun since the day before he'd embarked for Azkaban.

            "Why did you refuse to give Ruskin the Defenses-Downdraught yesterday?"

            Reid's soft voice snapped Snape out of his reverie.  "Didn't Potter explain--?"

            "I don't want Potter's explanation," Reid cut in.  "I want yours."

            "He seemed weak.  Ill.  He wasn't himself.  I thought here--with the Dementors--he might die if his magical defenses were stripped away."

            "You're no Healer.  How would you know that?" Reid said.  Gone was his mild manner, the Dumbledore-like twinkle.  His eyes and his voice were frigid.

            "I knew Ruskin pretty well at school," Snape said.  "We were in the same year.  The same House--"

            "Yes.  Slytherin.  The House which has produced more Dark wizards than any other.  You associated there with Ruskin, a known Death Eater."

            Fear twisted in Snape's gut.  "He wasn't a Death Eater then!"

            "None of you were.  _Then._  What about now?"

            "What do you mean?" Snape demanded.

            "Show me your arm."

            Snape felt his jaw drop.

            "You heard me," Reid said.  His voice was edged with menace.  "Roll up your sleeve and show me your left arm."

            "You're playing with me!  I won't have it!" Snape cried hotly.  "Don't you even want to know what happened in the infirmary?"

            Reid laughed.  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.  "I know what happened.  Yours and Potter's squabbling aroused every Dementor Officer Lawlor was trying to train on the second-floor cellblock.  They overwhelmed her, by the way.  Just in case you actually care.  The St. Mungo's Healers tell me she'll need at least two weeks in intensive care.  Meanwhile, my overtime budget is being rapidly depleted by the half-goblin guards who are working double shifts to cover the holes in my staffing schedule left by the forty Dementors which you and Potter have rendered absolutely worthless.  And the only  Death Eater the Aurors have captured who could have given us meeting locations and the names of those in the Dark Lord's Inner Circle is a soulless imbecile.  Thanks, again, to you and Potter."

            Snape said nothing.

            "I'll have to tell Madame Morgan what a good job you did."  Reid was smooth as silk again.  "She'll know how to reward you."

            The Hidden Hellebore.  The fear went from twisting in Snape's stomach to wringing it like a wet rag.

            "Exactly."  Reid seemed to have read Snape's mind.  "You may be back again soon, as my guest.  And the Dementors, I assure you, will be back in top form.  Until then, pack your bags and get out of here.  The launch leaves for the Shetlands in an hour.  You'd better be aboard."

            Snape needed no second invitation.  "Yes, sir," he said, then turned on his heel and left.

#

            A heavy, wet snow was falling on Snape's hood and against his face as he stood on the deck of the _MM Waterfetters_, staring out into the fogbound sea.  For something to look at, he turned to watch the Weatherman fiddle with his gauges, then wave his wand to settle the choppy waves that occasionally washed high enough against the hull to soak the deck with spray.

            No Creature-catcher on board today, Snape noticed.  With Dementors on Azkaban Island, the Ministry didn't need sea monsters swimming off it to prevent escape.

            Presently he felt a tap on his shoulder.  It was Potter.  Melting snow dripped from his hood and tendrils of his hair were plastered flat and wet against his forehead.  Even his glasses looked a little steamed, but not so that Snape couldn't see his hazel eyes.

            "Gave you the boot, too, did they?" Potter said.

            "I beg your pardon?"

            "Reid, I mean.  'Don't darken my door again,' and all that."

            Snape shrugged.

            "I don't care," Potter went on.  "I'm quitting, anyway."

            "Quitting?"

            "The Department.  The Aurors.  Let Barty Crouch have his Dementors.  I'm clearing out.  It'll make Dad happy, anyhow."

            Of course.  Potter _could _quit.  His family had money.  His mother was happy and cared for.  His father was well-connected.

            "Your father will find you another job, I suppose."

            Potter looked at him very oddly for a moment.  "He already has," he said quietly.  "I've been part-time for a while.  Now I can go full-time."

            "How nice.  That should make the noble sacrifice of your career as an Auror a little easier to bear."  Snape turned his back on Potter, to stare out again at the glassy, Weather-charmed sea.

            "Right," Potter said.  "Shouldn't have presumed to chat with you.  Got it."  In a few long, sure-footed strides, he was across the deck, on the port side, opposite Snape.  With his back to Snape, he, too, stared out over Azkaban Sound.

            Snape watched the sleety snow pelt Potter's tall, cloaked form for a few minutes.  When the image of a woman crowned with flowers, her green eyes glowing with love, rose between him and Potter, Snape turned again to the flat, gray sea.

#

            "Don't you worry about a thing, Severus," Lucius Malfoy said.  "I've already taken care of Thom Reid.  And of Melusine Morgan.  _She_ was easier, I'll grant.  She likes you, says your her best Apothecary.  But I managed Reid, too.  He won't talk.  I have _some_ friends, after all, even in this Ministry."

            Snape had never been happier to see Lucius's eagle owl than he'd been on that day he'd returned to London from his stint at Azkaban.  She had brought him a weekend invitation.  He had accepted it.   

            Now he and Lucius were walking together, in the leafless, frostbitten park of Malfoy Manor.  How easy it had been, after a few quietly encouraging words from Lucius, to pour out the whole, horrible story of Ruskin and the Dementors!

            "Thank you, Lucius," Snape said, as grateful for Malfoy's patient ear as for Malfoy's exertions in the Ministry on his behalf.

            "Think nothing of it.  It is my pleasure to be of service to a worthy man."

            They walked together in silence on the woodland path.  Snape felt Malfoy's eyes on him, in an intent, yet not disconcerting gaze.

            "Olaus Ruskin was a hero," Lucius said then.

            "Yes.  I think, in his way, he was," Snape answered.  "Even though he was a Death Eater."

            _Was._  They both used that word.  For, mercifully, Ruskin's body had died not a week after the Dementor had stolen his soul.

            "No, Severus.  No qualifications, please.  Ruskin was a hero."  Lucius paused.  "And I think it is time I told you exactly why I say that.  You see, mine was one of the names he died to protect."

            Snape stopped, stared into Lucius's calm face.  "No," he whispered.

            "Yes," Lucius said.  His right hand went to his left sleeve.  His long, graceful fingers worked for a few moments at the buttons of his shirt cuff, then he shoved shirt, coat and robesleeve above the elbow of his left arm.

            There was the Dark Mark, black as a brand burned into the pale skin of the inner forearm.

            Lucius dropped his arm.  The sleeves fell to his wrist, covering the Mark.

            Snape lifted his eyes and stared into Malfoy's face.

            "Don't you see it, Severus, even yet?" Lucius asked softly.  "Who are the tyrants?  Who are the oppressors?  Who are the evil ones, who must be resisted at any cost?  Ruskin saw.  Why, I hear even James Potter's seen the light.  He's quitting Law Enforcement; I hear he's already submitted his resignation."

            "Not to join you," Snape said.

            "Oh, no."  Lucius's voice dropped nearly to a soothing whisper.  "Not _that.  _But never mind Potter.  We're talking about you, Severus.  You've not only seen the depravity of the current Ministry of Magic, of Fudge, Crouch and their cronies.  You've shown the courage to resist it.  Don't you realize you don't have to resist it alone?  Don't you realize you could have comrades, friends to fight by your side?  Haven't you seen that the Lord's party is comprised of men and women of the magical caliber and moral fiber of Olaus Ruskin?"

            "Lord Vol--"

            "Shhh!  Don't say his name.  It's disrespectful, to say the least."  Lucius smiled one of his gentle, angelic smiles.  "But you do know who I mean."

            "Yes.  I know who you mean."

            They walked in silence.  Snape heard bare boughs creaking in the wind, saw winter sunlight dance through the branches to dapple the dead leaves that blanketed the ground.

            "I wonder if you could see your way, Severus, to coming with me sometime to meet him.  For a very short conversation.  Mutual introductions, as it were."

            "This is very dangerous, Lucius.  You're breaking the law."

            Lucius smiled.  "And you haven't?"

            Snape froze.

            "Oh, no, Severus.  I don't mean the Hidden Hellebore.  I mean when you refused to allow Potter to force the Defenses-Downdraught down Ruskin's throat."  Lucius paused, then continued.  "Breaking the law because the law is wrong.  Some people call that civil disobedience.  Rather like joining an outlawed political party, isn't it?  Whose members are now being subjected to Dementors by the Ministry of Magic.  A Ministry who have the law on their side, but not necessarily the right."

            Snape looked up, from sunlight on the ground to sunlight striking deep into Lucius's gray eyes.

            "Am I making any sense at all to you, Severus?" Lucius asked.

            "As a matter of fact," Snape said, "you're making a great deal of sense."

            "You'll go with me, then?  For a visit.  A short conversation.  Absolutely no commitment required.  If you don't like what you hear, back you come, no questions asked.  All you have to do is promise not to betray me.  If you can't do that, well then..." Lucius smiled.  "I'll just put a bit of a Memory Charm on you."

            "I can promise.  And I can come with you.  I'll hear your Lord out."

            _"...There are things worth dying for when you must, Severus,"_ Ruskin had said.  "_When people like Potter will no longer allow you to live for them._  _Maybe_ _someday you'll see that."_

            Maybe someday he would.

            "I'll hear him out," Snape said.  "For Ruskin's sake."

                                    THE END       


End file.
